Work has started to create a new five-court padel venue in Southport which is scheduled to open in June.
Site clearance and groundworks are under way at the six-figure Birkdale Padel Club development in Victoria Park, which is the first project by Sefton Padel.
Recent years have seen exponential growth in the adoption of artificial intelligence tools and systems across almost every industry. From predictive analytics to generative drafting tools, AI is no longer experimental for many businesses – it is becoming embedded in core commercial operations and those that fail to engage with it may risk losing competitive advantage.
2026 is shaping up to be one of the most significant years for UK employment law in decades.
With the Employment Rights Act 2025 now moving into phased implementation throughout 2026, businesses across all sectors will face a rapidly changing compliance landscape.
Whilst a company is solvent, company directors owe various statutory duties as specified by the Companies Act 2006 to the company’s shareholders (which can often be the same people).
The UK Government announced in its Autumn 2025 Budget that a number of welcome (and overdue) improvements will be introduced to the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) scheme legislation.
Experience suggests that the issue of fraud in invoice finance remains a persistent problem. Inherent in the operation of the sale of receivables is the temptation for unscrupulous or desperate directors to create ‘fresh air’ invoices, which do not represent the product of any genuine trading (or sometimes which exaggerate the extent of otherwise genuine trading), whether from the start of the facility or during times of poor trading.
At the end of this Summer, the Supreme Court delivered its anticipated judgment in the joint appeals in Hopcraft v Close Brothers Limited [2025] UKSC 33. The decision focused on motor finance, but the Court’s findings have far broader implications for all sectors in which brokerage services are available, including the invoice finance industry. The decision has come as welcome news across the UK finance world, though the story of compensation in relation to broker commission seems likely to rumble on for some time to come.